As a lawsuit continues between the City of Raleigh and sanitation workers, Kendra Jason, a member of the Student Worker Alliance, said her organization will support the workers and continue to promote the process that could have prevented their strike in 2006 — collective bargaining.
Collective bargaining, or the open way in which labor unions negotiate with employers, is legal in every state with the exception of North Carolina and Virginia. SWA held a teach-in two weeks ago to educate the community about the process, and Raleigh sanitation workers served on the panel.
Jason, a graduate student in sociology, said the SWA advocates for and supports the sanitation workers.
“We’ll probably contact Angaza Laughinghouse [the president of the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union or UE 150] and see if there is something we can do, or he contacts us,” she said.
The workers went on strike to protest unpaid overtime.
According to Dante Strobino, an alumnus and field organizer for UE 150, the sanitation department was understaffed, forcing the workers to put in extra hours. Instead of time and a half pay for these overages, however, Strobino said the workers were given compensatory time — or paid time off — instead.
The lack of staff, though, counteracted the compensatory time. Strobino said most workers could not take their time off, and they accrued so much of it that they went over the maximum that is allowed by the city.
After the strike, the workers were no longer required to work past 5:30 p.m. unless they volunteered to do so, according to Jerry Ledbetter, sanitation worker and president of the city workers’ union.
In addition to the forced overtime, Strobino said the department’s timekeeping was done on scraps of paper, which is part of what is causing the lawsuit at hand. Workers are being asked to remember the amount of hours they worked several months ago, and there have been discrepancies between their records and city records, he said.
Ledbetter said that while the workers received checks six months ago, they were “nothing comparable to what we should have gotten.”
“We’re looking to get our pay,” he said.
Steve Edelstein, the workers’ lawyer, said this pay will come after the lawsuit is settled.
“The city has records indicating they paid [the workers],” he said.
But Edelstein said this is inaccurate.
It’s been 18 months since the workers’ initial walk out. Jason said the slow movement of the settlement is frustrating.
“The major problem goes back to the original and big problem — the workers are not allowed to collectively bargain,” she said. “If they were, the process would move a lot faster for them.”
Strobino said UE 150 has been meeting with Mayor Charles Meeker, as well as sending workers to city council meetings.
“We can’t actually negotiate, but we can meet and confer,” he said. “Our union is trying to stay on top of this and have our workers feel empowered enough to say, ‘We’re not going to sit back and take this anymore.'”
And organizations such as Hear Our Public Employees, or H.O.P.E., are working to make it possible for these meetings to become more than conversations.
Since the teach-in, Jason said Ashaki Binta, a member of the International Worker Justice Campaign and Black Workers for Justice, has contacted the SWA and asked for more signatures on a petition to lift the ban on collective bargaining.
“We’re still collecting signatures now and talking to students on campus,” Jason said.
“Whenever the organizers contact us to do something, we’re a small group, but we try to participate and work when we can.”
